Reclamation (Book One of the Art of War Trilogy), page 21
‘He may be a prick, but the people like him, sir,’ Janek said, not perturbed by the President’s cavalier attitude. ‘It’s times like these that define a presidency.’
‘Well, this fucking presidency is going to be pretty well defined one way or the other isn’t it,’ Aurelius said, with a sardonic smile. ‘Anyway, it is done. The Fleet has been mobilised, for good or ill. Now, someone advise me on what to do with all these bloody kaygryn flooding Anternis.’ He nodded to Josette. ‘Chevalier, you were the Commissioner for Refugees. What would you do with the bastards? I won’t be backed into granting them asylum.’
‘You should grant them asylum,’ Josette said immediately. The President laughed at that, a genuine belly laugh.
‘Where? Anternis is ten kilometres square,’ Aurelius said. ‘Last I checked, half the city has been reduced to rubble by that shit of a provar cruiser.’
Josette’s eyes widened ever so slightly. ‘Sir, the least we can do is give them food and shelter.’
‘Why? Vos’Shan isn’t under attack. As far as I can see, Anternis seems to be the most dangerous place in the Upper Vadian Spiral. Letting them in is just putting them in harm’s way.’
Josette sighed loudly. Garrick could tell she was getting annoyed. He had seen that look once too often. ‘They’re clearly afraid, sir. A good portion of the militia has just been killed. Kaygryn civilians hold their militias in very high regard, higher than regulars. They think the UN can protect them, and they’re right. We can protect them. Since we all seem to be operating on the assumption that the provar wiped out our destroyer detachment by mistake, or through some misunderstanding, we can continue to assume that they will avoid hitting UN targets where they can?’
‘In light of the attack on the Goliaths–’ Aurelius began, but Josette cut him off.
‘The report from Anternis says that the Goliaths fired first after the destruction of the fleet. We cannot hold the provar responsible for responding in kind. Plus, Ascendancy troops were killed. This is no longer unilateral. Tit for tat, certainly, but not unilateral.’
‘I don’t think we can assume that the provar are avoiding UN targets,’ Pike said, throwing his hat into the ring. ‘Not any more.’
‘Then we are at war,’ Josette said, folding her arms. The general had exasperated her.
‘We are not at war,’ McKone said. ‘We are at diplomacy. Gonvarion will yield results momentarily. We can sound out the provar on their intentions and avoid future misunderstandings. I am confident this situation can be defused in a matter of hours.’
‘You’re the only one,’ the President growled.
‘We should still give the kaygryn asylum,’ Josette said. ‘We owe it to them after Hadan’s Reach.’
‘Oh for God’s sake!’ the President snapped. ‘How long must we go on about bloody Hadan’s Reach! It is done! Fifty years ago!’ he made a dismissive gesture with his hands. ‘As far as I am concerned, the presence of the kaygryn seeks only to inflame the situation. Granting them asylum will give the provar the mistaken impression we are somehow in league with them.’
‘Forgive me, sir, but I think Ms Chevalier is right,’ Garrick said. ‘We can’t just abandon the kaygryn. These are civilians we’re talking about here, women and children.’
‘Humanitarian assistance always does well in the polls,’ Janek added.
‘Are you serious?’ The President shook his head. ‘General?’
Pike cleared his throat. ‘Looking at it cynically, sir, if the provar start firing on Anternis again, there is at least some political currency to be gained from a large civilian death toll.’
Someone made a disgusted noise. Garrick would have put money on it being Josette.
‘My Joint Chiefs have all gone soft on me,’ Aurelius said. ‘Fine. So be it. They can stay for now. But you,’ he said, jabbing a finger at Josette, ‘are in charge of this humanitarian debacle.’
He rubbed his chin, then turned to his communications officer. ‘Janek, find a good way to spin this in the press. Might as well make me look like the compassionate type.’
The door opened at that moment, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. Scarcroft entered and nodded at the President.
‘The Buhrman Protocol is now active, sir. The Fleet will be fully mobilised within forty-eight hours.’
‘Thank you, Fleet Marshal.’
‘I am informed that the Achilles has made its final jump stopover. It is making better time than expected and will reach Uvolon in just under four hours.’
There was a moment’s pause.
‘I forgot about the evacuation,’ Aurelius said, then hissed a curse under his breath. ‘We should have told it to pull back. The last thing I need is for that to be destroyed as well.’
‘The summit, sir,’ McKone said. ‘I’ll brief my man to inform the provar personally. We should be able to get assurances that they will not attack. We have already successfully negotiated to have Aryn Vance escorted offworld.’
Aurelius exhaled loudly. ‘Is it too late to pull the Achilles back?’ he asked Scarcroft.
‘Yes, sir,’ Scarcroft replied.
The President fixed his eyes on McKone. ‘See to it. Personally. Understand?’
McKone bowed, unfazed. ‘Of course, sir.’
‘We could even evacuate the kaygryn on board the Achilles,’ Josette ventured.
‘Don’t push your fucking luck, Commissioner,’ the President snapped. ‘Janek, I want a report on what foreign media outlets are saying about this. Canvass xeno reactions to our present course, please.’
‘At once, sir,’ Janek said.
‘Right, that’s it. Everyone is dismissed. Frost and Howarth, you stay. I want a word.’
Garrick stood up with everyone else, this time making sure he was at the back of the exiting group. The last thing he heard before the door closed was ‘Xhevega’.
HARD LINES
‘We do everything in numbers.’
Station Master Kellick, on the functioning of the Tier-Three Trade Pact
Folhourtian Provari was the official language of the Ascendancy. Linguistically indecipherable to the human mind and phonetically unpronounceable to the human mouth, Yano had spent over a year learning instead what the provar termed veshx-Han’ghar – ‘bastard provari’ – a Terran creole with Folhourtian Provari as its lexifer. It had been a very long and very unenjoyable year, and at the end of it, he had felt no closer to understanding the aliens or their culture.
The difficulty arose both from the complexity of the language itself and from the physiology of the provar larynx. Folhourtian Provari was highly idiomatic, and in written form, consisted of nearly ten thousand variable glyphs which, singularly or combined, represented every state of affairs known to the Ascendancy. Terran, the official language of the UN, was so simple by comparison it was laughable. Nearly all FP glyphs had no Terran equivalent at all.
In the spoken form, FP was no less difficult to grasp. Aside from the fact that there were at least half a dozen ways of saying any given thing, depending on the context, regional accent, and even the speaker’s own personal experiences, the provar larynx consisted of three separate resonating chambers. These chambers, naturally harmonised from adolescence, produced a tri-tone voice which added another emotive and contextual layer to the language through modulation. Words spoken in a lower pitch, or dissonantly, for example, demonstrated anger, frustration or hatred. Words spoken in a higher pitch, or melodically, indicated jollity or amusement.
At least, that was what Yano had been trained to believe. While it was broadly correct, even that was staggeringly simplistic. In an effort to facilitate communication, provari ambassadors had trained themselves to utilise only one resonating chamber, but the result sowed as much confusion and discord among the provar themselves as it did among their Terran counterparts. Any willingness on the part of the provar to assist the listener, too, was tempered by their almost genetic disdain for every other Tier-Three species.
Consequently, any envoy within the Xeno Division dealing directly with the provar had to be possessed of, at the very least, a natural musical talent, a keen ear, endless patience and at least a year of intense training. Fortunately for Yano, he had all of these qualities and more.
Unfortunately for Yano, the provar were unlikely to care.
He watched as the moonlit grassland sped below. At any other time, it would have been beautiful. The current conditions – balmy air, deep violet sky and strong lunar light – had coaxed many of the luminescent zhahassi wildflowers into life. They shot past like laser beams as the diplomatic cruiser smoothly accelerated to one hundred and eighty kilometres per hour, heading straight for the Memorial Tower across the dark, deserted savannah.
‘I’ve spoken with McKone directly,’ Codey was saying. The man was sitting opposite him, arms spread across the top of the leather couch. Like Yano, he was watching the wildflowers. ‘Our most urgent priority is to tell the provar executors about the Achilles.’
‘What time is it due to arrive?’ Yano asked. As an afterthought, he had the cruiser make him a strong black coffee. The aroma of it filled the hold.
‘About eight o’clock.’
‘There’s still time then,’ Yano murmured.
Codey made a show of checking the time. ‘If you can get that across to the provar ambassadors in under four hours…’ he said. He let it hang.
‘Mm,’ Yano replied. It was an exaggeration, but not a ridiculous one. ‘The ambassadors aren’t half as bad at Terran as they make out. They can be pretty clever about it when they have the inclination.’
‘It’s the inclination they don’t have,’ Codey muttered, then shrugged. There was a short silence. ‘Just make sure they know about the Achilles,’ he said again, his voice strained. Yano looked away from the window to face him.
‘Did McKone give any other instructions apart from that?’ he asked, annoyed that McKone had not just spoken to him directly. Diplomatic protocol could be ludicrous at times.
Codey’s lip curled, and he shook his head. ‘No. No instructions, just an update.’
Yano recovered his coffee from the machine and took a sip. He turned back to watch the wildflowers, but his eyes settled on his own reflection in the window instead.
‘So the UN really is preparing for war,’ Yano said quietly. ‘Not good.’
‘No, not by a long way,’ Codey replied. ‘The Buhrman Protocol has its uses, but Aurelius must know it will be inflammatory.’
‘What can he do? Forty, maybe fifty UN servicemen dead? Hundreds of civilians? Not to mention the outright obliteration of central Anternis. He’s a politician. The people want blood.’ He shrugged. ‘Give the people what they want.’
‘He’s sleepwalking us into a war,’ Codey said harshly, making Yano start. ‘A war we can’t win. I’d love to stick it to the cobs more than most, but this is not prudent.’
‘We can’t just let them have the run of the place,’ Yano replied, feeling his own temper rise. ‘We might not be able to win, but a war with the UN would still be costly for the provar. Very costly. They are the ones who should be worried.’ He made an exasperated gesture as an afterthought. ‘They can’t just kill hundreds of people, Bal! Christ!’
Silence descended in the cruiser. Yano had never considered himself a hardliner – or even particularly engaged in the political process, beyond what his job demanded – but there had to come a point at which the UN stopped kowtowing to the provar at every turn just because of their ridiculous crusade fleets and overbearing military fanaticism. Indeed, there was a growing body of evidence suggesting that the provar wouldn’t even be able to spare the crusade fleets in an intragalactic war, at least in any meaningful way. Both government and private strategists had calculated that in order to maintain fleet numbers in Andromeda, the Ascendancy would only be able to spare a one-hundredth of the total for a domestic conflict. Combined with the Ascendancy Home Fleet, numerically it was no stronger than the UN navy.
Codey waved a hand dismissively as if to defuse the tension. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Just concentrate on warning them about the Achilles for now.’
‘Yes. Fine,’ Yano said, taking a deep breath to rid himself of his irritation. He took another sip of his coffee. ‘What time does the summit start again? Nine?’
‘Nine,’ Codey nodded. ‘Although I should imagine it will be earlier, now. We don’t know how the provar will react to the deaths of their pilots.’ He studied the ceiling as he thought. ‘We must prepare ourselves for the fact that they might not turn up at all.’
‘That’s right, what’s his name – the Goliath Captain?’
‘Ben Vondur.’
‘Ben Vondur,’ Yano echoed. ‘Killed four of them. About time some cobs bought it, wouldn’t you say?’ He grinned and sipped his coffee. He was trying to wind Codey up, but the older man didn’t take the bait.
It took a further fifteen minutes to reach the Memorial Tower. On a clear day it was visible from Vhalyssia, and even at night its silhouette could be made out against the deep violet sky from tens of kilometres away. It was a magnificent structure, formed of an attenuating spire of chaotically organised stone obelisks a thousand metres tall. Five hundred years ago it had been the heart of the Demilitarised Zone, and the architectural gravitas of the structure made it easy to see why. Tassis, the current seat of the Commonwealth government, had always been a disappointment in Yano’s eyes.
‘Here we go,’ Codey said as they reached the foot of the tower. The cruiser pitched down gently and made for one of the empty landing platforms, of which there seemed to be a paucity. Most were occupied by goods vehicles, and swarms of maintenance bots and loaders were carrying dozens of pallets of fresh food into the tower.
The cruiser came to a stop adjacent to three massive Alliance-branded trucks, each carrying hundreds of fresh methane canisters inside for the golgron. Yano stepped out into the warm, early morning air and inhaled deeply, then regretted it immediately when he achieved a chest full of hot exhaust.
‘This way,’ Codey said, moving past him.
‘Lead on,’ Yano said, relishing in the adrenaline coursing through his gut. He was not nervous; rather, he was anticipating it. This was real xeno diplomacy after all, not like the dross he’d been dealing with in Voga City.
Ambassador Velsze was waiting for them in the entrance hall, which, like the halls in the Voscmark, was beautifully and intricately decorated.
‘Special Envoy Yano,’ Velsze said. The ambassador’s voice was low and sombre, deliberately reflective of the gravity of the situation. ‘We came as soon as we heard the news.’ He gestured to the pair of robed zhahassi behind him, who bowed synchronously. Illiris Fhalco and Gendremar Zvell.
‘Thank you, Ambassador,’ Yano replied, bowing in return. ‘It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Representatives,’ he said to the two zhahassi politicians.
‘The pleasure is ours, Special Envoy,’ Zvell replied.
‘We have the provari executors waiting in the Hagr Suite,’ Velsze said, wearing a worried look. ‘I feel it incumbent upon me to warn you, Special Envoy, that they seem most… displeased.’
Yano nodded, adrenaline once more coursing through his system. He did not consider it beyond the provar to murder him. He smiled warmly. ‘We were expecting as much. Please, lead on.’
Fhalco and Zvell took their leave, and Velsze led them to the Hagr Suite, a large, well-appointed audience chamber on the thirtieth floor accessed by a maglev elevator. In the corridor outside, Velsze bowed once more.
‘I remain at your disposal, Special Envoy, for the duration of the summit. If there is anything you require, please do let me know.’
‘As always, Ambassador, you are most helpful.’
Velsze’s neck wobbled in pleasure, and he loped off down the corridor.
‘Are you ready?’ Codey asked.
‘Of course,’ Yano replied. He activated his IHD’s FP modulator and opened the door.
‘Ashgurn-valta!’ a voice snarled, deep, tri-modular and dissonant.
Yano blinked at the sheer volume and force of the phrase. It was a familiar one and had been for decades – so much so that Yano didn’t even need to translate it. It was the Ascendancy’s pejorative term for humans, and it meant, quite simply, ‘kaygryn lover’. There was no greater insult, as far as the provar were concerned.
‘Ghengari-Zecad valta samman’ackha, hai,’ Yano intoned in a calm, mid-spectrum major key. In Terran, ‘Glory and love be upon the Zecad, Ascended One’. It was the Standard Imperial Greeting – or rather, what both races had come to accept as the best possible translation of the Standard Imperial Greeting. In response, the foremost executor spat a glob of pink phlegm onto the floor.
The spitting provar was what Yano would consider a standard size and build for a citizen of the Ascendancy: two metres tall, alabaster-white skin, great, muscular thorax and disproportionately thin waist. A dense and highly efficient adipose layer meant that they were always bare-chested – a direct evolutionary consequence of the semi-Arctic temperatures of Folhourt. The head and facial features were a strange mixture of reptilian and mammalian, with an enlarged throat, rounded muzzle and bisected mandible, while the skin was smooth and hairless, leathery in places and rough, almost armour-like in others.
Yano smiled warmly as both executors regarded him, nictitating membranes flickering in the wan light. They both wore sarongs made of thick, sky-blue material, and about their waists were strapped ornate, gold-hilted sabres, or caldars. Something about that last detail annoyed him, though he couldn’t think why. A network of scars and tattoos marked both their bodies, some ceremonial and others undoubtedly authentic. The Ascendancy made little, if any, distinction between its warrior class and its diplomatic personnel.
